Cosmetic Surgery Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Cosmetic Surgery, including details on microsurgery, reconstruction, techniques, risks.

When an adult female seeks ritual genital alteration: ethics, law, and the parameters of participation.

Cantor JD

Yale University School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA. julie.cantor@stanfordalumni.org

Ritual genital cutting for women, a common practice in Africa and elsewhere around the world, remains dangerous and controversial. In recent years, a 14-year-old girl living in Sierra Leone exsanguinated and died following a ritualistic genital cutting. Hoping to avoid that fate, women with backgrounds that accept ritual genital cutting may, when they reach majority age, ask plastic surgeons to perform genital alterations for cultural reasons. Although plastic surgeons routinely perform cosmetic procedures, unique ethical and legal concerns arise when an adult female patient asks a surgeon to spare her the tribal elder's knife and alter her genitalia according to tradition and custom. Misinformation and confusion about this issue exist. This article explores the ethical and legal issues relevant to this situation and explains how the thoughtful surgeon should proceed.

Published 3 April 2006 in Plast Reconstr Surg, 117(4): 1158-64; discussion 1165-6.
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